ICRA is the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society’s flagship conference and is a premier international forum for robotics researchers to present their work. The 2015 conference will be held May 26-30, 2015 at the Washington State Convention Center in Seattle, Washington, USA. Having an all-women committee serves as an important watershed for the robotics community.

Parker said, “There are usually only one or two women involved in conferences and when I ask why so few, people say that there aren’t enough women with experience. So, look at all these women with experience now who can be helping with future committees.” Women might make up only 6% of the global IEEE community but Parker feels that even that presence hasn’t been sufficiently felt. She also encourages women to submit papers or workshops to ICRA 2015 by the deadline of October 1st, 2014 (just around the corner!).

As well as the incredible list of women on the ICRA 2015 committee (below), Robohub published a ’25 women in robotics you need to know about’ list in 2013 and we’ll be publishing a new list for Ada Lovelace Day on October 14, 2014. Ada Lovelace Day celebrates the achievement of women in computing, science, technology and engineering.

The idea is to provide inspiring role models across a wide range of robotics fields. The women on these lists are a fantastic sample from an admittedly small group. I encourage everyone to look further afield when searching for women to meet targets for boards, committees, positions and outreach, rather than expect the same few women to pick up all the slack. (This ’empowerment 101′ applies to any diversity demographic.)

This 3-year role covers overseeing the National Robotics Initiative alongside big data, human-centered computing, and core computer science. Parker is looking not just at internal program management but is also looking ahead to see what are the new directions for the robotics community. “To be somewhat visionary, to the extent that we can be,” said Parker. “For example, we’re an international community. Can we do better at representing that from a funding perspective? That’s a hard challenge, but that does’t mean we can’t look at it.”

In closing, the CISE Directorate enthusiastically welcomes Dr. Parker to NSF and looks forward to working with her to advance the frontiers of knowledge in information and intelligent systems.” Farnam Jahanian, NSF

We also heard from Ayanna Howard, HumAnS Laboratory and GIT, and Jeff Trinkle, NSF, NRI and Rensselaer, at the WIE luncheon at IROS 2014. With over 15,000 members around the world, IEEE’s Women in Engineering (WIE) is the largest international professional organization dedicated to promoting women engineers and scientists and inspiring girls around the world to follow their academic interests to a career in engineering. Formed in 1994, the luncheon marks the 20th anniversary of WIE.